Such momentary lapses (or, rather, spasms of disbelief) were generally followed by an immediate thrust of conviction, as was the case on this day, subtle as it turned out to be. I never had blind faith, like many I know. Yet, I was always able to talk myself away from the ledge—where at the bottom of that cliff I knew the late Christopher Hitchens’ spirit, Richard Dawkins, and scores of atheists I’d met working in television were waiting to catch my fall from grace.
Whether it was my need for a bit of light to illuminate so much darkness around me, or just my sheer will, I continued going to Mass, kept praying (though the prayers felt empty, as if I was talking to myself), and searching, forcing myself to believe, same as we sometimes force ourselves to love.
“Can you imagine not questioning any of it?” a priest said to me in the confessional after one of my more traumatic religious hiccups. “You’ve been given a gift. Anyone who doesn’t question his faith is a liar. That moment you come out of the disbelief will be filled with joy.”
I understood, but did not believe him.
If there was no such thing as religious redemption, no Jesus, no God, no Great Unknown, what was left? It meant I was alone. That was where the panic existed for me: in being alone. What I wanted was to believe, unhindered, uninterrupted, like a child. But that gift of faith, given to me in childhood, was slithering away. As it did, I asked myself: Was Jesperson’s evil edge cutting into me? Because if I truly believed in redemption, salvation, divinity, and everything discussed at that altar and in the Bible, including the core teaching that no soul is unreachable, why was it that I’d never gotten on my knees inside that church and prayed for Jesperson’s soul?
Slowly, over the next few months, I noticed my psychosomatic pain disappear as each spiritual crisis arose and seemingly resolved itself. Much of it was the result of dealing with a madman, being sucked into his world, and trying to unpack his self-reliant, parasitic, skewed philosophies of life and murder. Perhaps there was no answer? Maybe I was searching for reconciliation within my life that did not exist?
I’d been thinking about making plans to visit Les. I needed to do that. I wanted his input and opinions of his son. I’d put it off long enough. My plan was to visit the old man, get a few comments from him to round out Jesperson’s parental smackdown, and then focus on what I could do to make use out of all the time I’d invested in interviewing Happy Face—my main objective being, of course, to convince Jesperson to help identify a Jane Doe in Florida and sort out a mess of a situation he claimed existed in California surrounding one of his kills, a victim named Cynthia Lynn Rose.
My belief was that he had to know who his Florida Jane Doe was, where she lived. I pondered whether he could have hidden her identification cards or purse, same as Bennett. Was it possible that a serial killer could murder a woman and not know any identifying markers about her?
I decided to go behind Jesperson’s back and make contact with the detectives investigating the Florida case. I knew one detective had reached out to Jesperson the year before I started communicating with him for Dark Minds. But Jesperson had ignored the cop’s pleas. Hell, Jesperson had sent me the original copy of every letter Florida law enforcement had sent him. I wanted to see if maybe I could help in some way. Being as close to Jesperson as I had become, having spent years building his trust, perhaps I could get him to open up and divulge secrets about the case. Act as a liaison between Jesperson and Florida law enforcement.
“Convincing him to help us would be huge,” forensic imaging specialist (FIS) Paul Moody, of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBSO), told me during one of our first conversations. “We’re hoping he can draw a picture of what she looked like.” Moody explained that Jesperson thought they might be tricking him. That once he helped identify Jane Doe, they were coming after him with the death penalty.
“Let me see what I can do,” I told Moody.
34
YOU CAN SEE WITH THOSE EYES
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he
never shows to anybody.”
—Mark Twain
WATCHING MY BROTHER DIE WAS EXCRUCIATING. THOSE FEW DAYS when we knew death was in the room, pacing, waiting for the right moment, it was as though we existed underwater, forever trying to sluggishly wade our way through each twenty-four hours, screaming, not being able to hear one another. You thought about nothing else. Your life was on hold. You sat and stared at the television, didn’t see a thing or hear a word. You ate and didn’t taste the food. You slept with your eyes and ears halfway open.
When Meranda realized Mark’s time had come, she phoned a priest and asked him to pay a visit. That same night, when Meranda went up to see her dad, the priest was on his way out. “He doesn’t have long,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Mark suffered during his final days. He held tough, but the pain burned and pounded every cell of his body. His kids were there, loving him, talking to him, reassuring my oldest brother that they knew he’d done the best he could. I recall him saying, over and over, how “cold” he was inside his skin. He could never get warm enough. Meranda sat and held his hand for hours, listening to him breathe. No words needed to be spoken. He had one friend, a woman, who slept by his side at night, held his hand during the day.
One evening, as the end drew near, Mark whispered to me: “My entire body throbs. The pain is unbearable. I am so, so cold.” That last time I saw him, his legs flailed under the sheets as if some unknown entity controlled them with strings. He thrashed. Mumbled. Skinny as an AIDS patient, his entire body was as yellow as morning piss.
Mark needed that morphine.
As I looked back, the black-and-white photo we existed in when Mark and Diane ripped terror throughout our family had come into full color. I saw it there inside my brother’s room during his final hours. The love between my brother and his kids. You could feel it suspended in that stuffy, sterile air. They had all forgiven him—and meant it.
After saying good-bye to the priest, Meranda sat and held her father’s hand. Mark Jr. and Tyler, along with Meranda’s husband, Mike, stood bedside.
“We’re all here,” Meranda told him. “You can go now and be with Diana.”
On March 24, 2004, I was in the middle of teaching an adult education creative writing/publishing course at Rockville High School. When my phone rang as I was lecturing, I knew he was gone. It was my brother Tommy calling, once again delivering the bad news, a guy who’d somehow been designated all our lives as the Phelps bullhorn of tragedy.
I said hello and Tommy, a six-one, two-hundred-pound, hard-bodied, third-degree–black-belt tough guy, cried, saying nothing more.
When I arrived at the hospital, Mark looked serene, at total rest.
Finally.